Awritingreader’s Weblog

Ngugi calls for the abolition of the English department based primarily on the conclusion that Eurocentrism and Western emphasis is largely a phantom “truth”. Ngugi states, “Underlying the suggestions is a basic assumption that the English tradition and the emergence of the modern west is the central of our consciousness and cultural heritage. Africa becomes an extension of the west“ (2091).

While I originally found myself championing alongside Ngugi’s argument (and fundamentally I still do), I’ve had to stop and pause to consider whether the ghost that is Western supremacy is actually a ghost, or if the idea might be founded.  Stick with me for a minute… Without wanting to perpetuate ideas of western supremacy at all, I find that it may be a legitimate consideration to examine on the basis of how history has played its hand. If we look at the position of the “western world” in comparison to the rest, we’d have to ask ourselves why, if not for some degree of betterness, the world looks to our nations to determine fashion, for example, or to be used as models of government. Why are our movies more highly valued or our music? Why are we looked to to solve the world’s problems?

Ngugi’s statement that “Africa becomes an extension of the west” has starting me to thinking exactly how the extension operates. If I were to really locate the root of my thought, I think I would realize that I rarely think of Africa except in terms of its relationship with the rest of the world.

So here I introduce the element of history and question whether the relatively recent obsession with documenting every occurrence has helped to form the ideas of western or euro-centrality. If our history books only tell the tales in forms that place Europe as the spring-off point for all other action, and if we learn our past through this history, what tangible other way is there to conceive of that relationship? Furthermore, the  reigns of power have constantly shifted in history, but widespread power the way we think of it, could not be without invention and technology that helped to shrink our world by growing our contact with it. It may be coincidental that the burst of technology took place at a prime time when the west was ripe for the seizing of the opportunity this allowed.

I admittedly don’t know enough about history or how the logistics of societal development occur, and I certainly do not believe that the west holds any iota of an inherent supremacy. But I consider the possibility that the way the world has unfolded, has allowed their dominance to be possible and for this reason, we only know how to conceive of Africa as an extension of the west, however illogical the connection may be.

*Oh, and I think the answers to the above questions, lie more in the fact that we took this coincidental unfolding and made ourselves super-powers for it, and because we all like to be best, we imposed this assumption on others to the point that the whole world may be under a colonizer effect and so choose their preferences for this injustice*